The present invention relates generally to a method for detecting fraudulent Internet related traffic and, more particularly, to a method for detecting if an affiliate web site is likely to send fraudulent traffic to an advertiser web site, in order to fraudulently increase the revenue of the affiliate web site in a “Pay Per Click” system.
Internet related traffic, or visits to a web site by an Internet user, is the main statistic used by an Internet advertiser to determine where to display and how much to pay for its advertisement on another's web site. Typically, the more Internet traffic a web site that is displaying an advertiser's advertisement is receiving, the greater the possibility for the advertiser to have its products or services exposed to potential purchasers. As such, there is an incentive for an advertiser to display its advertisements as immensely as possible in order to reach the broadest potential purchaser base.
A common method of Internet advertising includes charging an advertiser for the exposure of its advertisement to all Internet users regardless if the advertisement resulted in the Internet user actually visiting the advertiser's site by clicking on the advertisement. For example, an advertiser may pay an affiliate site that is willing to display the advertiser's advertisement for the number of times that the advertisement is displayed. While this method of advertising offers a potentially high exposure rate to numerous Internet users, such simplistic exposure to such a large number of Internet users offers little in the form of Internet users generally interested in the advertisement, which would prompt the Internet user to visit the advertiser's Internet site to purchase the advertised product or service. For example, out of 10,000 Internet users that the advertisement was displayed to, if only 10 went to the advertiser's web site to view the advertiser's products or services, the advertiser must still pay for the 10,000 advertisement displays.
It is well known that actual Internet traffic can be used as the main means for determining whether or not compensation should be paid by the advertiser for a referral via an advertisement placed on an affiliate's site, commonly referred to as “Pay Per Click” advertising. With Pay Per Click advertising, the advertiser compensates an affiliate only if an Internet user is actually interested in the advertisement and subsequently visits the advertiser's site by clicking on the advertisement displayed on the affiliate's site. In other words, the advertiser pays the affiliate for displaying the advertisement only if the advertisement is successful in enticing an Internet user to visit the advertiser's Internet site from the affiliate's site. As such, there is an incentive for the advertiser to use affiliates that have the potential to attract as many potential customers as possible, while there is an inventive to the affiliate to attract as many users that would be interested in the advertiser's advertisement in order to increase its revenue.
Since an affiliate's compensation is based proportionally to the number of Internet users that are successfully redirected or referred to the advertiser's site via the advertisement displayed on the affiliate's site, there is an incentive for the affiliate to maximize the amount of referrals. As such, affiliates have devised many schemes and devices that fraudulently cause such referrals. For example, some affiliates have formed “click clubs” that compensate users that are not interested in the advertiser's products or services, to repeatedly click on an advertisement link to the advertiser's site for a small compensation, thus maximizing revenue for the affiliate (“incentivized clicks”). Computer programs are also used to impersonate a human click and thus automate the process of clicking on an advertisement to an advertiser's site (“automated clicks”). In either scenario, the end result is the same in that with such “bad Internet traffic,” the advertiser is required to compensate the affiliate because the advertiser cannot differentiate between an actual potential customer that clicks on the link and bad Internet traffic. As such, there is a need to monitor such referrals to increase the actual potential customer base, instead of the affiliate attempting to maximize its revenue with bad Internet traffic.